YUGOSLAVS & RASTAFARIANS

FAMOUS GAMES AND EVENTS IN DUBLIN’S DALYMOUNT
PARK, KNOWN AS THE SPIRITUAL HOME OF IRISH FOOTBALL.

Despite my heart belonging on
Dublin’s Emmet Road with Saint
Patrick ’s Athletic FC, my house
is across the city and up a hill
in Cabra. Walking towards
the city centre, I pass the
floodlights of Dalymount
Park, home of bohemians,
on an almost daily basis , icons
of domestic football that
are undoubtedly nicer on the
eye than the brutalism of the
Phibsboro Shopping Centre and
office comple x which towers
over the stadium.

Dalymount Park was opened to the
public in September 1901 by Lord Mayor
Tim Harrington, a popular figure in
the city who held the office for three
successive turns. A crowd of over 5,000
watched Bohemians defeat Shelbourne
on that occasion, with the game finishing
up 4-2. Well over a century on, it seems
that these two clubs may both ultimately
find themselves as tenants of the Dublin
City Council in the historic venue with
a possible groundshare on the cards.
Despite its current dilapidation in
places, it has witnessed some incredible
moments in Irish football history and
indeed in broader social history, with Bob
Marley famously performing there in
1980 at one of his last outdoor concerts.
Here are a selection of iconic matches
played at the Dublin 7 stadium, and even
a ridiculous event for good measure.

Ireland 5-2 Germany
October 1936 br>
The German football team had
a perfectly pleasant time in Dublin,
beyond the 90 minutes on the pitch
in Dalymount. Hosted in the Mansion
House by the ‘shaking hand of Dublin’,
Lord Mayor Alfie Byrne, they endured
something of a drubbing in Dalymount
Park on 17 October 1936. The German
side gave the Nazi salute as their national
anthem was played in the ground. The
Irish Times had nothing but praise for the
Irish side, with their reporter noting that;
“In my close on 40 years experience of
Association football, I have not seen any
Irish team play with greater verve, dash
and persistency”. Copies of the match
programme, complete with swastika
insignia, have become highly sought
pieces of memorabilia, fetching
hundreds of Euros at auction.

Ireland 3-2 Poland November 1938 br>
We’re lucky in 2015 to have an
Uachtaráin who lives and breathes
Irish football, but in the 1930s it was
considered sacrilege for the nation’s
President to attend an Association
Football match, as Douglas Hyde would
discover. The decision of Ireland’s first
President to attend Dalymount Park
in the winter of 1938 caused something
of a moral panic for many in the Gaelic
Athletic Association, leading to Hyde’s
removal as a patron of the sporting
body. His crime? Breaking the infamous
‘Rule 27’, and the promotion of a ‘foreign
game’’. The Irish Times was scathing in
its criticism of the GAA, following the
removal of Hyde, by insisting that
“the loss will be to the GAA. Their little
victory over President Hyde will be
pyrrhic, because the head of the State
will continue to be the representative
of all the people, and not of any clique,
however large it may be”. The crowd in
Dalymount responded to the presence
of Hyde at the Polish game with
a standing ovation. Hyde, who had
presumably committed some sort of
‘anti-national’ sin by attending a garrison
game kick-about, watched the match
beside Oscar Traynor, a veteran of the
1916 Rising and a former Belfast Celtic
goalkeeper who would later become
President of the Football Association
of Ireland.

Yugoslavia 4-1 Ireland October 1955 br>
It is not often that one has to pass
a Legion of Mary picket on their way into
a football international, but that is exactly
what confronted those who attended
Ireland’s friendly with Yugoslavia
in October 1955. Dublin’s Archbishop,
John Charles McQuaid, was a seemingly
unstoppable force in Irish political life,
hell-bent on keeping Catholics out
of Trinity College, sex education
out of school and communists out
of Dalymount Park. Yugoslavia had
emerged from the Second World War
as a Communist state under General
Tito, and the perceived ill-treatment
of Catholics in that country had brought
thousands onto the streets of Dublin at
demonstrations in the 1940s. When the
FAI extended an invitation to Yugoslavia
to play in Dublin, McQuaid publicly called
on Dubliners to boycott the game. Did
they? Almost 22,000 attended the clash,
meaning that it’s fair to say McQuaid
took a greater hammering than the Boys
in Green on that occasion. Philip Green,
the celebrated RTÉ match commentator,
famously refused to commentate on the
match, citing his Catholic faith. Liam
Tuohy, who was lining up for Ireland,
would later recall that the Yugoslav
players blessed themselves in the tunnel
before the game, leading him to remark
that “there were nearly more Catholics
on their side than there were on ours”.

Shamrock Rovers 0-6 Manchester Utd September 1957 br>
A huge crowd of 45,000 saw the Busby
Babes of Manchester United take
on Shamrock Rovers in 1957. One of
the names on the scoresheet on that
occasion was Liam Whelan, a local
lad from only a stone’s throw away in
Cabra. Whelan lined up for United, and
sadly was one of eight players to die
in the Munich Air Disaster a year later
in 1958. The Hoops went in only one
nil down at half time, but the class of
United was just too much and after the
break the floodgates were well and truly
opened. Four goals came in the last
twenty minutes. One young man who
was in the crowd was Eamon Dunphy,
who remembered years later that there
was a great buzz in the city with the
visit of the Manchester side; “Rovers’
fans were a minority among the crowd.
Most simply wanted to be there to see
the English champions we had read and
heard so much about”.

Bohemians 3-2 Glasgow Rangers September 1984 br>
The chant ‘3-2 in the 84’ has entered
Bohs lore, and while the Phibsboro side
have disposed of Scottish competition
in Europe in the past (just ask Aberdeen),
they were ultimately knocked out of
Europe by Glasgow Rangers in 1984.
Still, their home victory in the first
leg was a huge achievement for the
Dublin club. However it was totally
overshadowed by the atmosphere inside
the stadium, where Union flags and
Vatican flags were to be found burned
in opposing ends of the ground. In
a colourful account of what it was like
in the away end on that night, a Glasgow
Rangers fan recalled on the 25th
anniversary of the game “I noticed what
appeared to be a railway sleeper being
positioned by our supporters near the
edge of a wall above the tunnel from
where the police had emerged, ready
to be dropped on the next police charge”.
Bohs came from behind twice in front
of a huge crowd, and Rangers boss Jock
Wallace had little good to say of the
travelling support, stating that; “what
we saw here tonight was a disgrace to
football and a sad reflection on Rangers
club”. At a recent function to mark the
30th anniversary of the fixture, David
‘Rocky’ O’Brien who scored against the
Glasgow side, recalled, “I remember the
goal I scored against Shamrock Rovers
the Sunday before because I hate Rovers
more than I hate Rangers”.

‘Football With The Lid Off’ 1950s br>
Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin
are two names you may not expect to
pop up in an article looking at historic
matches in a Phibsboro football stadium,
but they’ve both graced the pitch of
Dalymount Park. In a way. In the 1950s,
an annual charity match between
members of the press and stage drew
big crowds. Actors dressed as Éamon
de Valera, Churchill and Stalin ran around
madly on the pitch in 1952, with the
goals barricaded and TNT ‘explosives’
adding to the festivities of the occasion.
The game remained an annual event for
much of the 1950s. The Irish Times report
of the 1957 fixture noted that “Nobody
knew who won the game, but the referee,
Dr. Kevin O’Flanagan, announced that
it was a draw. Brendan Behan led
a movement for the ref’s hanging:
this was almost carried out”.

Donal Fallon writes for Come Here To Me, a group blog that focuses on the life and culture of Dublin City. Music, history, football, politics and pubs all feature.